Hospitality & Restaurants

Hotel hospitality is all about welcoming guests and being a refuge while ensuring privacy, comfort, and safety. But how does the hospitality industry tread that line between not overstepping guests’ privacy and keeping them safe?

Welcoming a hotel guest with a service animal may be as simple and check-in and check-out. Instituting a refresher on the legal do’s and don’ts of service animals can help hospitality sectors manage these helpful companions with ease. Below, we cover some of the basics of service animal protocol.

Hurricane Harvey is the first major hurricane to hit Texas since 2008 (Hurricane Ike, category 2). It’s scheduled to make landfall on Saturday and expected to bring enough rain to overwhelm bayous and flood large swathes of land. Texas, particularly Houston, is flood-prone and no stranger to the many scenarios which may occur this weekend, but we have four tips to help you and your insureds in Texas make it through the weekend with slightly less panic.

What if every time you filled a glass of water you threw half of it in your boss’s face? Well, that’d be bad! But that is kinda what happens with most landscaping water systems.

Half the water that is being used to sustain the grounds around your building is being wasted. That’s straight from the horse’s mouth—the EPA, that is. Community associations and other management looking to increase water conservation can target their landscaping areas as an integral place to conserve.

Mobile apps, online ordering, and automated kiosks—what’s a restaurant’s best bet for adding tech? More and more eateries in the hospitality industry are paving the way for an automated future—one where sales increase, costs go down, and customers are happier to skip a line and some in-person wait time.

New restaurant technology is becoming a standard, and a digital lunchtime of ordering and paying before picking up your food is becoming the norm. A restaurant with a mobile app benefits with: enticing photos of food for customers to peruse, click-to-call buttons for customers who use the app to get ahold of the restaurant, and easy access to leaving reviews on important sites. Not to mention access to the entire menu, specials, and discounts or loyalty rewards.

Since we originally wrote this article there have been several new cases of Legionella reported where people have died and fell ill. In June, one person died and six became ill in the Lenox Hill neighborhood in New York where investigators are looking into the air-conditioning system for contamination as the source of Legionnaires’ Disease. In another incident, two guests at the Las Vegas Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino contracted Legionnaires’ disease while they were staying at the resort in the months of March and April. Both the hotel and the Southern Nevada Health District were charged with investigating the two cases, remediating the problem and reaching out to past and current guests. They found that Legionella existed throughout the hotel’s water system.

Just imagine, you’ve been planning your wedding for months and after the big day finally comes you, your partner and dozens of guests fall ill, complaining of diarrhea, fatigue, nauseousness, sweating, and chills. That’s exactly what happened to a couple and their guests following their wedding reception, which was held at an Atlanta hotel. It was later uncovered through litigation that an outbreak of norovirus hit guests of at least three other events along with at least 40 hotel employees.

It’s that time of year again when the sound of children running around in playgrounds across our neighborhoods fills the air. It’s also a time for heighted precautions because as fun as a playground can be, it’s also a place where kids can get seriously injured.

More than 200,000 children ages 14 and younger are treated each year for playground-related injuries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Of these children, more than 20,000 are treated for a traumatic brain injury (TBI), including concussion. Additionally, about 56% of playground-related injuries are fractures and contusions/abrasions, and about 75% of injuries are related to playground equipment.

Hey, hospitality industry—Did you know that the world water supply is projected to significantly decrease in the next fifteen years? The United Nations predicts a 40% increase in water scarcity by 2030. A mega-drought could equal mega-problems.

As the hurricane season – June 1 through November 30 – unfolds, safety preparations should already be underway by homeowners and coastal business owners, including hotels and restaurants. Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say the Atlantic could see another above-normal hurricane season this year, predicting a 70% likelihood of 11 to 17 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher), of which 5 to 9 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 2 to 4 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of 111 mph or higher). The Weather Company also predicts an active season, with an expectation of a total of 14 named storms – seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.

It’s a no-brainer: Water=Life. We need it, we use it, but we’ve gotta conserve it better. Commercial and residential buildings can have a huge impact on water conservation with just a handful of low-cost or no-cost water solutions.

Sometimes parents feel like they need a vacation when they’re on vacation. It’s true. The packed itineraries, disrupted routines, and lack of alone time can be exhausting. Which is why over 18 percent of U.S. hotels and resorts now offer classes, camps, and activities just for kids. It’s great.

A man walks into a Vegas hotel room. Sees a silhouette of a person in his darkened room. In a panic, he scrambles away, causing injuries to his body and mind. Bam. Lawsuit. The twist?

The “person” he saw was a mannequin, part of room decorations in a Planet Hollywood casino-hotel with 2,500 rooms. Here’s where umbrella coverage comes in to cover expenses above and beyond standard insurance limits for liability claims.

When New York City billion-dollar hedge fund manager David Moradi decided to hang at The Cosmopolitan’s Marquee nightclub, he didn’t expect to end up suffering a traumatic brain injury. This is exactly what happened when an issue occurred over a $10,000 bill David racked up at the nightclub. According to his claim, the Marquee security “assaulted, battered and falsely imprisoned him” while they demanded his ID and credit card to confirm his signature on the paid bill.